Chapters (26)
- Feature
- PREFACE
- VENICE
- THE GRAND CANAL
- VENICE: AN EARLY IMPRESSION
- TWO OLD HOUSES AND THREE YOUNG WOMEN
- CASA ALVISI
- FROM CHAMBÉRY TO MILAN
- THE OLD SAINT-GOTHARD LEAVES FROM A NOTE-BOOK
- ITALY REVISITED
- A ROMAN HOLIDAY
- ROMAN RIDES
- ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
- THE AFTER-SEASON IN ROME
- FROM A ROMAN NOTE-BOOK
- A FEW OTHER ROMAN NEIGHBOURHOODS
- A CHAIN OF CITIES
- SIENA EARLY AND LATE
- THE AUTUMN IN FLORENCE
- FLORENTINE NOTES
- TUSCAN CITIES
- OTHER TUSCAN CITIES
- RAVENNA
- THE SAINT'S AFTERNOON AND OTHERS
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- Copyright
Seen from below and diminished by distance, Anacapri makes scarce a sign, and the road that leads to it is not traceable over the rock; but it sits at its ease on its high, wide table, of which it covers - and with picturesque southern culture as well - as much as it finds convenient. As much of it as possible was squeezed all the morning, for St. Antony, into the piazzetta before the church, and as much more into that edifice as the robust odour mainly prevailing there allowed room for. It was the odour that was in prime occupation, and one could only wonder how so many men, women and children could cram themselves into so much smell. It was surely the smell, thick and resisting, that was least successfully to be elbowed. Meanwhile the good saint, before he could move into the air, had, among the tapers and the tinsel, the opera-music and the pulpit poundings, bravely to snuff it up. The shade outside was hot, and the sun was hot; but we waited as densely for him to come out, or rather to come "on," as the pit at the opera waits for the great tenor. There were people from below and people from the mainland and people from Pomerania and a brass band from Naples. There were other figures at the end of longer strings - strings that, some of them indeed, had pretty well given way and were now but little snippets trailing in the dust. Oh, the queer sense of the good old Capri of artistic legend, of which the name itself was, in the more benighted years - years of the contadina and the pifferaro - a bright evocation! Oh, the echo, on the spot, of each romantic tale! Oh, the loafing painters, so bad and so happy, the conscious models, the vague personalities! The "beautiful Capri girl" was of course not missed, though not perhaps so beautiful as in her ancient glamour, which none the less didn't at all exclude the probable presence - with his legendary light quite undimmed - of the English lord in disguise who will at no distant date marry her. The whole thing was there; one held it in one's hand.